Is Hell Freezing Over? Apple Might Team Up With Google To Buy Kodak’s Patents

So Apple and Google were once friends. Then they were frenemies. Now they’re just straight up, cold-hearted enemies who would kill a cute little baby platypus if it meant the other company would suffer. Can’t they just get along and get over their “thermonuclear” squabbles? Maybe. For a minute.

Kodak’s auction of intellectual property has kind of brought the two companies onto the same team. They both want Kodak’s digital imaging patents, but rather paying for them all by itself, Apple is part of a consortium of bidders that want to nab the Kodak patents for super cheap. Even stranger, Google isn’t the only Apple rival in the group.

The Wall Streets Journal reports that even though Apple and Google were making separate bids for the patents a just last month, they both joined a team that also includes Samsung and HTC.

“The bidding group brings together a raft of strange bedfellows. It includes Apple Inc. and Google Inc., fierce competitors in the global smartphone market. People familiar with the matter said the consortium bidding on Kodak’s patents also includes Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc. and HTC Corp., all companies building smartphones based on Google software.”

The large consortium of competitors wants to purchase Kodak’s patent portfolio for more than $500 million above the opening bid price. That sounds like a lot, but they’re hoping to pay about $2.6billion less than Kodak hopes to win.

Kodak has put their patents on the auctioning block to get relief with their bankruptcy issue. If the Apple-Google-Samsung-HTC consortium wins the auction, it will mean fewer boring lawsuits between the competing companies, but Kodak has stated they will pull their patents from the auction block if they don’t get what they feel they’re worth.

We’re really really hoping Kodak let’s the group just buy their patents. Shoot, we’ll even start a Kickstarter campaign to cover the $2.6billion difference if that’ll help. We’re just tired of seeing everyone sue everyone.